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Security report for programminghistorian.org

ProgHist Ltd · Education · United Kingdom

Medium risk. 7 critical or high findings in Email security, Security headers and 1 other check.

Security score

63/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

Programming Historian is a well-established non-profit educational platform founded in 2012 and operated by ProgHist Ltd, a UK-registered charity and company. The website offers peer-reviewed, novice-friendly tutorials in multiple languages aimed at humanists and educators interested in digital tools and workflows to support research and teaching. The platform holds ISSN registrations for its multilingual content and publishes under a Creative Commons license, reinforcing its open-access educational mission. The business model is focused on providing free educational resources supported by donations and institutional partnerships.

Scanned

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

7 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. Email security

    SPF, DKIM and DMARC stop others sending email that looks like it comes from your domain, a common route to phishing and invoice fraud.

    • Critical

      No email authentication configured

      Domain is vulnerable to email spoofing

      What to do: Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC immediately

  2. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing X-Frame-Options header

      Prevents clickjacking attacks

      What to do: Add "X-Frame-Options: DENY" or "X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN"

    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…

  3. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching programminghistorian.org

This scan found 24 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

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Recommended

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
95
Security headers
15
Email security
40
DNS health
75
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
63

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention programminghistorian.org, from OffSeq Breach.

No leaked records found

Breach holds no records for programminghistorian.org right now. New leaks arrive continuously, so monitoring on Breach alerts you if that changes.

Monitor on Breach (opens in a new tab)

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

The organization occupies a niche in the digital humanities education sector, leveraging a community-driven, peer-reviewed content model to maintain high-quality tutorials. Its multilingual approach broadens its global reach. The use of GitHub for hosting and version control indicates a transparent and collaborative development process. The absence of commercial advertising and the presence of donation appeals suggest a funding model reliant on community and institutional support. The charity and company registrations enhance credibility and trust among users and partners.

Security posture

The website enforces HTTPS with a valid SSL configuration and uses domain status locks to prevent unauthorized domain transfers or deletions. However, it lacks DNSSEC and security headers such as Content-Security-Policy or X-Frame-Options, which could improve protection against common web attacks. No security policy, incident response contacts, or vulnerability disclosure mechanisms are published, indicating room for improvement in transparency and readiness. The use of Google Analytics without a cookie consent banner may pose GDPR compliance risks. Overall, the security posture is solid but could be enhanced with additional best practices.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC to strengthen DNS security and prevent spoofing.
  2. Implement standard security headers (CSP, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options) to mitigate common web vulnerabilities.
  3. Add a cookie consent banner to comply with GDPR and improve privacy transparency.
  4. Publish a security policy and incident response contact information to enhance trust and preparedness.
  5. Consider adding a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to encourage responsible reporting.

Contact details published on the site

Legal name
ProgHist Ltd
Registration number
12192946
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
ProgHist Ltd
Description
Publishes novice-friendly, peer-reviewed tutorials that help humanists learn a wide range of digital tools, techniques, and workflows to facilitate research and teaching.
Key services
Peer-reviewed tutorials, Multilingual educational content, Research facilitation tools
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
jQuery 3.2.1, Bootstrap 4.0.0-alpha.6, FontAwesome 5.0.12, Google Fonts, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Frameworks
Bootstrap
Performance
fast
Mobile
good
Accessibility
good
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Domain status clientDeleteProhibited and clientTransferProhibited
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • No vulnerable libraries detected

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Website is a multilingual educational platform focused on digital humanities.
  2. Content is peer-reviewed and published under a Creative Commons license.
  3. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly listed on the homepage or footer.
  4. No visible cookie consent banner despite use of Google Analytics.
  5. No terms of service page detected.
  6. Site uses modern frontend technologies and is mobile optimized.
  7. No security.txt or vulnerability disclosure information found.
  8. WHOIS data shows a legitimate UK-registered charity and company.
  9. No suspicious or malicious content detected.
  10. No WAF or blocking mechanisms detected.
Technical notes

Notes

The site is built using a modern static site generator (Jekyll) and leverages Bootstrap 4 and FontAwesome for responsive design and iconography. It uses Google Fonts for typography and includes jQuery and Tether for UI interactions. Hosting is managed via Squarespace Domains with Google Cloud DNS name servers. Performance is likely fast due to static content delivery and minimal external dependencies. The site is mobile optimized and accessible, with clear navigation and multilingual support. SEO is supported by proper meta tags and structured navigation. No CMS vulnerabilities or outdated libraries were detected.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

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